


A Flea Named Justin Moorland

by Centeris2



Series: Evergray's Followers [7]
Category: Star Stable
Genre: Gen, Poly Pile AU, Rebecca Has Friends AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 03:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16210892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Centeris2/pseuds/Centeris2
Summary: Justin does not appreciate that Ydris is now friendly with his lady friends. Ydris appreciates how easy it is to torment Justin.





	1. Chapter 1

Justin had a flash of terror when he entered the bangalow and saw Ydris plopped on the couch, happy as could be with a cup of tea. Anna and Louisa were sitting on either side of him with papers and notebooks, a laptop open on the table in front of them. They were discussing something very seriously but all Justin could process was Ydris’ eyes slowly moving up to fix on him, a sneer twisting over Ydris’ face.

“Rebecca-” Justin whispered, grabbing her from her computer, she was the closest one to Justin and the door. She stood and followed him outside, curious.

“What the fuck!?” Justin hissed once they were outside and a few steps away from the bangalow.

“What? Ydris? Ok-”

“Okay what!? He wants to destroy the Earth! He thinks of humans as parasites! He calls us fleas! He kidnapped Concorde and Bobcats Girls and turned them into horses for his show! What is he doing in the bangalow?!” Justin demanded, shaking and furious and scared.

“Well, yes, he did, but we’re trying to work with him to save Anne and both our worlds,” Rebecca explained. Justin snorted.

“He doesn’t care about us! He probably thinks this is hilarious!”

“But we’re learning from him at least-”

“As if he’d tell the truth! He’d tell the untruth or whatever!”

“We have to try! We already got Concorde back and we’re-”

“You think he gave back Concorde out of the goodness of his heart?” Justin hissed, shocked by Rebecca’s naivety.

“It was according to plan-”

“Plan? What plan?” Rebecca sighed and rubbed her forehead, annoyed that Justin wasn’t letting her speak more than a few words.

“I’ve been trying to remind Ydris that he was training me, we were working together before. We gave him back one of his five leaf clovers-”

“You just got it from him!”

“Justin,” Rebecca groaned, “please let me finish.”

“Right. Right. Sorry, I’ll shut up.”

“Thank you. The five leaf clover he gave me when he returned Concorde was the one I had returned to him earlier. Anyway now we are actually talking and working together. He knows we can get Anne back with Concorde and the druids’ help, so now we’re trying to figure out how to save Pandoria and Earth. Any questions?” Rebecca asked with a smile, relieved she had finally been able to say everything.

“So you guys just keep tossing each other the same five leaf clover?” was Justin’s first question.

“Yeah basically. I picked it and gave it to him, Ydris gave it to Midnightwarrior, Midnightwarrior gave it back to Ydris, and then Ydris gave it to me. It’s a bit silly now that I think about it,” Rebecca admitted with a grin. At least the clovers gained power when given freely.

“Do you trust him?” Justin asked more seriously, pouting a bit. Ydris was very attractive, and the bangalow was named so for a reason. It made Justin uncomfortable that Ydris had been invited into a place for friends and lovers.

“God no, but I do trust that he wants to save Pandoria and is willing to work with us to that end,” Rebecca laughed a bit at first, a master of illusions and one who had already shown a willingness to fight against them was never to be trusted fully. But so long as their goals matched up they could work together, and once Pandoria was safe he would no doubt be much more agreeable.

Justin didn’t like it but he didn’t kick up anymore fuss, not in front of the girls anyway, but he stayed quiet and to his own little corner of the main room in the bangalow, purposefully putting himself between Rebecca and Ydris. Ydris was not blind and found Justin’s behavior amusing. Foolish boy, Rebecca had nothing to fear from him, but he would gladly destroy Justin for a laugh. It’d be as simple as crushing a flea.


	2. Chapter 2

Ydris was not surprised when Justin appeared in the fortune telling tent the next day. Well, not surprised Justin had come to confront him, but surprised Justin would do it in so private a place. It’d be so easy to turn Justin into an actual flea, who would ever know?

“Well well, a-”

“Oh shut up,” Justin snapped, not sitting down. With Ydris sitting Justin actually felt some sense of security, or at least wasn’t intimidated by the Pandorian towering over him.

“But I am a fortune teller! I must speak!” Ydris smirked and added a dramatic flourish over the crystal ball, causing shadows to fall over Justin’s face.

“Alright then tell me, what are you planning?” Justin demanded, gripping the back of the chair in front of him and leaning forward a bit.

“You were at the house, you heard my discussions with your friends,” Ydris teased.

“I mean what are you really planning? If you-”

“Spare me the threats, you could never hurt me. But put your little mind at ease, I have no interest in hurting your lady friends,” Ydris said with a sneer, choosing his words carefully. 

“Oh what, now you’ve suddenly seen the light? Now you’re going to be a good guy? Bullshit,” Justin sneered down at the Pandorian.

A slow and wicked smile grew on Ydris’ face, gaze going right through Justin.

“I have always been ‘the good guy,’ is there nothing more noble than saving multitudes of innocents?”

“You would have destroyed an entire planet, an entire reality! That’s not saving anyone, that’s murdering billions of lives!” Justin argued.

“And what was your plan?” Ydris asked, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest, smirking at the boy.

“What?”

“You wanted to harness Garnok, tame that power, to what? Rule the world? Force peoples and nations to bow to you so they could keep warm? Decide who could afford to live?”

“That’s- not…” Justin grew pale. How did Ydris know? How could he know?

“You knew it was never about benevolence or generosity, it was about power, the power of money and the power of Garnok. Enough to rule this world and beyond given time. The power to have anything you wanted,” Ydris tilted his head, sneering, relishing in Justin’s panic.

“That’s not true! I never-! It was meant to help!” Justin protested, taking a step back. He didn’t move any further away from Ydris, trapped in this little tent, unable to get out.

“Tell that to the darkness in your heart, in your blood. I can smell it. You reek of blood that isn’t yours, I can see it on you,” Ydris raised an eyebrow, looking down from Justin’s face to his hands. Justin swallowed hard, refusing to look down, refusing to look at the illusion of blood on his hands. It wasn’t real. It was just an illusion. The hot, sticky blood on him wasn’t really there.

“I was going to be merciful,” Ydris continued, slowly looking back up into Justin’s eyes, “unlike you. How long did you make her suffer?”

“Stop it,” Justin tried to back away, tried to turn and run, but every step went nowhere, every turn brought him facing Ydris once more.

“Stop it!” Justin begged, covering his face before jerking back, the blood covering his hands getting on his face.

“Amusing. You think you deserve forgiveness, think you can make it right. You think maybe if you help her enough, please her enough, do enough, that somehow it’ll make those pain and memories and scars go away,” Ydris continued, ignoring Justin’s pleas to shut up and stop doing this.

“Why are you doing this!?” Justin screamed, hating that smug expression, hating how the Pandorian had remained seated and nonchalant.

“Because I want to know why you think you deserve to help her when I do not. Surely there must be a fascinating reason. Guilt? Jealousy? Fear?” Ydris suggested, slowly, purposefully, dragging out each word as Justin bit his tongue and tried to block it out.

“It’s not fair!” Justin screamed, unable to take it, “I spent so long trying to get her to forgive me, to trust me again! And you just show up and waltz in after saying you want to destroy everything! I don’t deserve forgiveness so why should you!?”

“Ah, the flea admits his feelings, hush now,” Ydris cooed, Justin surprised by the smell and feeling of blood disappearing from his hands and face, “the hurt is only temporary.”

“How long before it goes away?” Justin muttered, holding himself as he looked at Ydris, not expecting an actual answer.

“When you die,” Ydris sounded reassuring, but the words didn’t match.

“That’s not temporary! A lifetime isn’t temporary!” Justin argued, angry that here Ydris was threatening him, and everyone else, again.

“Ah, but it is! Humans have such short and tiny little lives, your pain will be over before you realize it!”

“So what, hurting us doesn’t matter because we have short lives?” Justin snapped.

“Of course it still matters, that’s why I was going to make it short and as painless as possible. But the lives of pests are insignificant to the lives of other, better, beings,” Justin snarled, hating how Ydris was looking at him as a lesser being.

“So why bother helping us poor parasites?” Justin demanded, annoyed when Ydris snorted.

“I’m not,” Ydris smirked.

“Ha! I knew it! You’re just fucking with my friends, well I won’t let you hurt them!” Justin swore, growling when Ydris burst into laughter.

“I already told you, your lady friends have nothing to fear from me,” Ydris repeated himself.

“But you said-”

“They are not fleas. You, however, and the druids and the humans of this wretched reality are expendable,” Ydris bit his lip, savoring the look of confusion on Justin’s face. Did the foolish boy really not know? He even had a few drops of magic in him, he was slightly more than a human, yet he couldn’t tell? Xin may be replaced, this boy was truly a fool.

“I don’t… but they’re also human,” Justin stammered, Ydris laughing again.

“Please, boy, let me look into your future,” Ydris begged, gesturing to the seat Justin refused to take.

“No thanks,” Justin grumbled.

“Then I shall look into Rebecca’s future,” Ydris said with a wink.

“Wouldn’t she need to be here for that?” Justin asked, fighting back a blush. He wouldn’t mind knowing if Rebecca stayed in Jorvik and with him…

“Oh I’ve known her future for a while now,” Ydris teased, “don’t you want to know?”

“No, that’s her future, that’s not something I should know if she doesn’t know,” Justin refused.

“She knows, or at least she is coming to realize it,” Ydris reassured Justin, “don’t you want the truth about her?”

That made Justin sit down, though he mentally kicked himself for being drawn in like this. But Justin knew there was more to Rebecca than he knew, more to Louisa and Anna and Lisa and all the soul riders. Something beyond him that the druids wouldn’t tell him, and the girls wouldn’t either.

“Ahh, there,” Ydris purred, satisfied Justin was finally sitting down. 

“Just tell me,” Justin muttered, looking away.

“You know she is special, you aren’t that blind at least,” Ydris began, Justin noticing the tent growing darker, “but you have no idea how different you are. No human could ever possess her, they’d have better luck possessing the sun. Nor can you ever understand her-”

“Oh and you can?” Justin interrupted, hating the patronizing tone. Ydris just smiled and pleasantly answered Justin.

“Of course, much more than you ever could. You are so small, so short, so mortal, just a tiny fleeting thought, a moment in eternity,” Ydris loved the perplexed expression. Humans really understood so little.

“She’s also human,” Justin pointed out.

“A vessel does not define its contents,” the wizard teased.

“What are you saying?” Justin asked but the Pandorian kept smiling in silence.

“Fine, what about the others? The soul riders? Louisa? Anna?” Justin asked, hoping to get more answers.

“Similar, contents constantly passing between vessels. Oceans occasionally held in bottles, thunderstorms temporarily in cups,” Ydris didn’t explain at all, the crystal on the table going dark, only the candles giving off light.

“What does-”

“It seems our time is up,” Ydris cut him off, gesturing to the dark crystal ball, “please come back tomorrow for another fortune.”

“You can’t just-” and then Justin was outside, the tent having no discernable way inside. He groaned and rubbed his face, glad the feeling of blood was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

Instead of the bangalow Justin had gone to Rebecca’s stable. She’d have to come back at some point, and he had to talk to her. 

Unfortunately he was waiting until night was falling, but it was worth it when Rebecca rode into view.

“Justin? What are you- why didn’t you text me?” Rebecca asked, confused.

“I, just, uh,” Justin, now that he was with Rebecca, had forgotten everything he wanted to say. He’d spent the past several hours finding the words and now they were gone.

“Come on in,” Rebecca offered, opening the door and beckoning him inside. 

“What’s up?” she tried again once they were inside and she was untacking Midnightwarrior.

“I spoke to Ydris,” Justin started, “he’s so crazy and evil! He talks about humans like they are insects! And he thinks that too!”

“Yeah, we’re working on getting him to not think that,” Rebecca admitted, “it’s not something we can change overnight though. It’ll take some time.”

“Well he’s not going to listen to you about it!” Justin pouted, Rebecca looking at him with an eyebrow raised.

“Oh?”

“You’re not… you know…” Rebecca’s expression indicated she did not know.

“Ydris thinks you aren’t human,” Justin explained, surprised when Rebecca laughed.

“For such a smart guy he’s an idiot,” Rebecca chuckled, putting the tack away and grabbing a brush.

“I mean he believes it. You and the other girls, he was calling you guys weird things like oceans and rainstorms and vessels and stuff,” Justin tried to explain.

“Huh, that is weird. I don’t feel like an ocean,” Rebecca muttered, Midnightwarrior snorting and twitching as his soul rider brushed him.

“Well like I said, Ydris believes it. Or maybe he was just fucking with me…” Justin mumbled, realizing it could have all been a joke. He watched Rebecca work, she didn’t have a response for him and Justin didn’t have anymore to say. Justin had seen her, and the other girls, do amazing things. Miracles. Magic. Witches and druids and soul bonds and things that were so beyond him he could never really understand. Justin had always thought humans could do things like that, but now he wasn’t so sure. Rebecca looked human, but what she could do… Justin could see horse souls, but compared to her that was so useless.

Ydris could do all sorts of magic, magic that matches the soul riders and the other girls. Maybe Ydris was right, maybe he could understand Rebecca better. 

“Justin?” Rebecca’s voice cut through his thoughts.

“Huh?”

“You’ve been staring, are you alright?” Rebecca asked again, Justin blinking a few times as awareness came back to him.

“Yeah, I’m, I’m fine,” Justin mumbled, smiling at her. She nodded and went back to grooming, Justin’s smile fading with her back turned. What if she, and the others, grew so powerful that humans were nothing more than insects? The Dark Riders and Dark Core already viewed humans like that, and the druids were not above secrets and mind control as well. What were humans to people and groups so powerful? And Justin had the advantage of some magic and connections to Dark Core and the Keepers, what about totally normal people? What about Connie and Tor? And the Bobcat Girls? Most people he knew didn’t have any magic, were their fates totally dependent on which magical faction won out?

Justin didn’t like that idea.


End file.
